Ruffin-It: Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, where all these liberals comin' from?

Published 10:22 am, Friday, September 7, 2012

Paul Ruffin, Texas State University System Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Professor of English at SHSU, lives in Willis.

Paul Ruffin, Texas State University System Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Professor of English at SHSU, lives in Willis.

Ruffin-It: Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, where all these liberals comin' from?

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While I was over in Memphis a few days ago promoting one of our new books from Texas Review Press, I found myself unable to address a question pressed on me, a question that I have encountered before more often than I wish to think about.

My first night there, physician Starner Jones, the author of Purple Church, took me off to Porch Court at the home of a friend of his, whom I know but will not name. Though I have never attended Porch Court before, I got the idea that they are not uncommon in the South.

As I experienced it in Memphis, Porch Court is a gathering of professionals, on the closed-in back porch of someone whose fortunes have not suffered significantly during the recent recession. I cannot break things down neatly according to profession, but I judge that those in attendance were mostly physicians, attorneys, and business owners. I was the only academic on the premises. I was also an outsider, my Mississippi origins notwithstanding, though since Dr. Jones brought me, they treated me like family.

Liquor was in abundance, as were big cigars; the liquor I accepted in moderation, but seasonal bronchitis has taught me not to take chances with cigars, large or small, much as l used to love them. I might gnaw on one a little when one is forced upon me, but at Porch Court I mostly sipped and sat and listened to the talk of the day, which focused largely on politics and the upcoming Republican Convention in Tampa. Early on, Starner was invited to Tampa to recite the Declaration of Independence, which he can do without skipping a beat, so he was and is something of a local hero.

Starner also wrote a letter to the editor of the Clarion Ledger [Jackson, MS] about a patient he treated in the ER who, from all he could gather from the details of her life style, did not qualify for her “Medicaid” status. His experience with the woman merely added impetus to the consternation he has experienced as he has watched what is happening in American politics and medicine. His letter went viral on Youtube.

So, since I was Starner’s guest and publisher, I was treated rather nicely by the fellows in attendance at Porch Court.

Only a totally out-of-touch fool would have failed to observe that these men were conservative to the core, and the subject very much on their minds was what the country might do in the November election: return BO to the White House and risk a further unraveling of America as we have known it or replace him with someone who is at least qualified to address some of the great issues facing us.

I found it only natural, then, that someone would ask me just what it is about American universities that they attract liberal professors the way _____________________. You can fill in that blank any number of ways. I cannot put down what was said, since this is a family newspaper.

“You teach in a university, an English department at that, and you are a member of the NRA?”

“Yep, I do and I am.”

“And Starner says you have a CHL [Concealed Handgun License]?”

“I do.”

“And you carry?”

“Of course I carry. That’s what the license permits me to do. I don’t carry all the time and certainly not where it’s prohibited, but I do when I’m in some place like Houston.” I hesitated just long enough. “Or Memphis.”

That got a laugh.

“Are you carrying now?”

“Am I in Memphis?” (Actually, I wasn’t packing that particular night, since I saw no need to.)

That got an even bigger laugh.

“I am willing to suggest,” I said, “that a hell of a lot of liberals who are clamoring for gun control are packing heat themselves. One Texas columnist who frequently argued that people should not be permitted to own guns, much less carry them concealed, told me once that she carried a snub-nose .38 in her purse. ‘On account of you never know,’ she said.”

Then the discussion turned back to the issue of the preponderance of liberals in our universities, especially in philosophy and the social sciences, humanities, and arts. There was a great deal of intelligent speculation about it, but no real conclusions as the night wore on.

“I guess it just makes you a gentler, more generous person if you espouse liberal doctrine,” one said.

“Yeah, you’re more generous with other people’s money,” said another.

“About three-quarters liberal in all but athletics, math, and the hard sciences,” someone else suggested.

One interesting notion that was advanced was that there are far more conservatives on our university faculties than might be believed, but they keep to themselves and do not use the classroom as an arena for indoctrination the way liberals often do. I declined to deny or confirm that conclusion since I have never really paid a whole lot of attention to the ratio of liberals to conservatives at schools where I have taught. At the university I keep my politics—such as they are—to myself and leave others to theirs. My job is to teach English grammar, composition, and literature, and I do not consider my classroom the proper place for trying to persuade my students to think as I do about anything outside those areas.

On my way back to Willis, almost a nine-hour drive, I thought a great deal about the subject, and I’ve come to a few conclusions of my own.

Paul Ruffin, Texas State University System Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Professor of English at SHSU, is an editor, publisher, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He was the 2009 Texas State Poet Laureate.